


flower dance

by procrascarnations



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Minor Character Death, based on Flower Dance by DJ Okawari, hi hello welcome to another bad fic by procrascarnations, i just needed a good sob story for keith lmao, i mean sure it can be romantic if you like, listen to it it's so pretty, okay guys i ship romantic klance and all but here take them being P L A T O N I C, shirooo i still love you, spoiler alert it's shiro lol sorry friends, whatever floats your boat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 08:40:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10382766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrascarnations/pseuds/procrascarnations
Summary: in which lance is a lonely planet explorer and keith is a half-galran who is passionate about flowers





	

**Author's Note:**

> hi friends!!!
> 
> first of all, a big thank you to 100 kUDOS ON LIES??? WHAT?? I am so touched like actually omg thank you so much it made me so happy.
> 
> second of all, i'm not really fond of this fic like at all but HEY maybe if i post this someone can comment and tell me how to ACTUALLY WRITE lmao
> 
> last of all, this fic is based off of 'Flower Dance' by DJ Okawari which is v nice you can check it out [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AULG4MoYxQk) yes i am aware the excerpt at the start is from some old movie however i don't remember the name
> 
> enjoy if you can, otherwise PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO WRITE BETTER like i beg of you pls

Lance had had his fair share of planets. He’d landed on worlds with breathtakingly beautiful landscapes and worlds with harsh unforgiving atmospheres. He’d stayed on lands filled with peace and lands ruled by terror. Yes, most of his life he had spent in an array of domains, each so extensive and different that he knew he would never get sick of it. And of course, he could never forget the planet he had come from: Earth, an unpredictable world filled with countless variations both in terrain and in inhabitants. There were times when he yearned to see his family again; wished to be able to swim with his siblings in Varadero Beach…

But, as a designated planet explorer, Lance had left that behind for the vast silent emptiness of space. 

He entered a galaxy he didn’t recognise and approached a small planet. He was still far away, so he couldn’t tell too many details but it was a deep shade of purple. Blue scanned the planet and automatically relayed him information that had been recorded by previous planet explorers.

_Planet Galra_  
_Inhabitants: Galran, pl. Galra, generally hostile if provoked_  
_Atmosphere: Breathable, converted by native plants_  
_Land: Mostly rocky and infertile aside from plant fields. Arable land is used to produce resources for survival, inedible for humans  
_ _Gravity: 9.8 m. s−2 per 3,200 km_

“Thanks girl,” Lance said, patting the control panel of his beloved ship. The gravity was the same as Earth’s and it had a breathable atmosphere. Two out of four wasn’t too bad. He had food stocked from the previous planet he had visited, Arus, because of this (even if it was tasteless green goo). He adjusted the translator on his wrist that the Olkari, a friendly and technologically-advanced species from a planet several galaxies away, had provided him a while ago. He wasn’t sure how it worked but it translated everything he heard into English and everything he said into the native tongue of whatever planet he was on. It had made planet exploring a lot easier.

Blue landed in some open space, the Galra around it glancing up warily at the incoming intruder. Lance did a little dance for luck, because he could. Blue wasn’t sentient but he could almost feel her laughing with him. Hopefully the Galra would appreciate his dancing too. “Do you think they would, Blue?” he asked his spaceship. Of course, there was no reply.

Zipping up his backpack of supplies, Lance opened the door and stepped out. Galra was surprisingly beautiful for a barren terrain. Perhaps it was because he had landed next to a flower field.

Before him, natives bustled about, harvesting crops and some shiny purple stones that grew from the ground in clusters. They were all either the same height or taller than Lance, who had already been above average on Earth. They were buff and coated in purple fur — the same deep purple of most of the planet — with sharp looking teeth and dull yellow or purple eyes. The majority of the species had mechanical prosthetics — it seemed Galra was a technology reliant planet. The natives shot glares at him cautiously, but otherwise minded their own business, likely used to visits from the odd planet explorer.

Lance grinned and walked towards the flower field in which young Galra were playing and spotted a humanoid figure near the back. He approached the person, assuming he was another planet explorer who was collecting information for the centre back on Earth. The universe was large, but there was always the possibility of meeting someone else, though this was one of two times he had met another explorer. “Hi,” he greeted. “I’m Lance, planet explorer from planet Earth under the name, Blue Paladin.”

The dude turned to him warily and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

Maybe that dance had brought bad luck instead. A bit of impatience flared through Lance, but he remained civil. “Oh, are you not a planet explorer?” Lance asked. If it sounded a little sarcastic then so be it.

The guy didn’t seem to pick up on it. “Uh, no, actually…” He hesitated. “I’m a Galran resident here.”

At Lance’s confused look, the ‘Galran’ shifted his gaze downwards. 

“I’m half,” he explained. “My _father_ was a planet explorer from Earth and I know more about Earth than the other Galra, but I grew up here.”

“Huh,” Lance said, intrigued by the information. The Galran looked very human. He was shorter than Lance, therefore even shorter than the other Galra. He was also nowhere near as buff, though he had a little muscle. Even now that Lance was closer to him, the only indication that the guy had Galran blood in him was by the slight purple hue of his irises, but it was so subtle that it would have passed as normal on Earth. And was that a mullet? Lance hoped that it was a strange Galran gene he had inherited. He didn’t know what time period it was back on Earth, but mullets were most definitely outdated. “Well, name’s Lance. You?”

The Galran eyed him warily. “…Keith.”

Lance figured Keith was a rather reserved Galran. Maybe it was the human blood in him — as long as he wasn’t actively trying to kill him, he didn’t really care. “Well, Keith,” Lance trailed off, trying to look for something to keep the conversation going. If he got him to talk more, he could learn a lot about the planet and its customs. His eyes drifted to the ground dotted with leaves and petals. “Watcha doing in a field of flowers?”

Keith rolled his eyes and turned back to the flowers, resuming his work. He was watering them with a translucent purple liquid that was slightly glowing. The flowers were a similar shape to carnations, but were deep purple and speckled with dots of yellow. Did everything on this planet have a purple and yellow colour scheme?

“My job,” he replied coolly, clearly starting to get irritated. At Lance’s raised eyebrow he flicked his eyes back down to the plants. It was clear Lance was going to keep annoying him until he got answers to his questions. “I take care of the local _aerflos_ fields, make sure they’re functioning and stuff.”

“Huh,” Lance said again. “I didn’t take you for a florist.”

Keith pulled a face. “I’m not a florist, but being one is a highly respectable job. Only Galra with degrees are allowed to distribute _aerflos_ seeds.”

Lance snorted. “Dude, I don’t know what florists do on this planet, but back on Earth they just arrange colourful flowers, sell them as decoration and provide plots for fanfiction.”

“Oh,” Keith said. He was frowning, but Lance had spent his life reading beings from all over the universe. He could tell he was curious. “We don’t have enough arable land here to spend it on decoration. Our _aerflos_ fields are very important.”

Lance was also curious. They had told him that it was a good quality to have as a planet explorer. “How so?”

“They serve the purpose of changing hydrogen into breathable oxygen. And they're as necessary here as the air is on Earth,” Keith told him, smiling a bit as if proud that he knew so much about the other planet. So these were the plants Blue was telling him about.

“But I still say,” Lance countered, “they're flowers.” 

Keith rolled his eyes and sighed. “If you like.”

“Do you sell them?” They could be a useful sample or simply decoration for Blue’s interior.

“I’m afraid not.” Keith frowned. 

“But…” Lance wasn’t too bummed. It wasn’t like he had any of the Galran currency anyway. However, something in him didn’t want the conversation to end. “Maybe we could make a deal?”

The Galran furrowed his brow. “A deal?”

“Yeah! Instead of selling me these flowers, tell me some information about this planet.”

Keith looked like he was about to berate him for dissing his flowers before he changed his mind. “What do I get out of this?”

Lance grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “I’ll tell you all about Earth.”

—

Earth seemed like a strange planet. From the things he had heard when he was little, Keith had assumed that it was a terrible mess of a planet. Lance, on the other hand, though admitting that Earth was indeed a bit of a mess, described the planet like it was one of the most amazing things in the universe. “Like, yeah, you don’t want to meddle with Earth’s politics,” Lance was saying, “but everywhere is so _different_ on Earth.” Lance continued at Keith’s confused look. “See, here on Galra everything’s purple and covered in those flowers no matter where you are on the planet, right?”

“Uh, right,” Keith replied, miffed about his disregard for the _aerflos_. “But the _aerflos_ are incredibly vital—”

“Ah buh buh buh,” Lance interrupted, nose scrunched and shushing him with his pointer finger. He then continued as if Keith hadn’t said anything. “Well on _Earth_ , you could drive for about, say two hours — that’s a bit less than two vargas — cross a border and end up with people who speak an entirely different language!” He gestured with his hands to emphasise his point. “And if you _fly_ for a few hours — vargas — you basically time travel! Isn’t that cool? _And_ you could go from a town covered in sand to a town buried in snow is such a short amount of time. Does it snow here?”

Keith shook his head. “My father told me about it though. It’s… cold?”

“ _Well_ , Keith-y boy—” Keith wrinkled his nose at the nickname and glared at Lance. “—snow is— hang on!”

“Snow is hang on?”

“No no no no,” Lance said, waggling his finger right in Keith’s face. He seemed to have a habit of sticking his finger in people’s faces. Was it an Earth thing? “You need to keep up your end of the deal. You haven’t told me anything about this purple monstrosity apart from those oxygen converting flowers!”

This guy was seriously getting on his nerves. “I’ll have you know that _aerflos_ flowers—”

“Are very important, blah, blah, blah. That’s fine, cool, even,” Lance complained, rolling his eyes. “But I’m a planet explorer, Keith, I travel the galaxy to collect information about planets. That’s my _job_.”

“It’s a pretty cool job.”

Lance nodded smugly. “Yeah, it is— Hey! Stop changing the subject.”

Keith rolled his eyes, trying to hide a smile. He concluded that even for an Earthling, Lance was rather… unrestrained. His father had certainly not been like him, nor his brother. “Sure, whatever. What do you want to know?”

The planet explorer hummed while stroking his chin like a weblem without its stomachs, which equated to what Lance had told him was an idiot on Earth. “Just like— the customs? What is the most important amongst the Galra?”

Keith didn’t even need to think about it. “Violence,” he said. “If you’re not a farmer or florist, you’re in the army, there’s no question about it.”

The alien nodded his head slowly as if he understood although Keith suspected he didn’t. “I guess warfare would be kind of inevitable with tech like that… Is it just for war?”

“What?”

The planet explorer rolled his eyes as if his question wasn’t just the most ambiguous string of words to come out of someone’s mouth. “The fighting! Is it just for war or entertainment or…?” he trailed off, raising an eyebrow at Keith as if telling him to get the hint.

“Oh, right,” Keith said, mood suddenly plummeting. Keith may have been a Galran but that didn’t mean he supported the customs. That was mostly why he had refused the job of a fighter pilot to become an _aerflos_ farmer. “There’s this event at a place called the Arena,” he explained, swallowing nervously. “They’re called gladiator tournaments. Prisoners of the Galra from thousands of different species are entered in it each week and they are basically pitted against each other to fight until one of them dies.”

Keith saw Lance swallow nervously, which he found surprising. The Earthling was a planet explorer, surely he’d heard stories far worse than this. “What if they refuse to fight each other?”

“Then they’re both killed,” Keith replied monotonously, though he clenched his fists. “Eventually they go up the ladder to fight the Champion of the last season. And if the prisoner wins, they become the new Champion until it all happens again.”

Lance looked horrified. “Galra _enjoy_ this? I mean sure, the same thing had basically happened back on Earth ages ago, but seriously?”

Why was he so upset if he had already been exposed to history similar to this? Maybe it was a human trait he hadn’t inherited from his father. Though Keith could understand his horror. “They do. They treat it as a family event,” Keith replied, gritting his teeth to keep the flames that were licking at the base of his throat from spilling out. He was not going to break down in front of an alien, or in front of his _aerflos_. “Which is completely disgusting,” Keith added under his breath.

Lance squinted at him, probably trying to read him. “What’s your history with it?”

He was surprisingly sharp. Or maybe Keith had just not be subtle enough about it. “What?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb,” he replied hotly, but then seemed to catch himself. His expression softened. “Actually, you don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Lance was right. Keith didn’t have a particularly good history with the gladiator tournaments. It wasn’t like he owed it to the planet explorer to tell him anything, but some part of him, for some strange reason, wanted to. “It’s fine,” Keith said, frowning. “My father and my brother were both sent to the tournaments.”

He heard Lance gasp quietly but continued.

“My father lasted until he was pitted against my brother and then killed himself so that Shiro would win.” The flames were crawling up his throat. “My brother… He went on to become the Champion for six seasons, the longest ever.”

“So… He’s still Champion?”

“No, that was a decafeeb ago,” Keith spat, the flames now around his eyes. “Emperor Zarkon got sick of him so he modified a prisoner and took away Shiro’s Galra tech arm in his last match.” Keith could still remember everything, every little detail. The bloodthirstiness of the prisoner, how Zarkon had ridded him of his sentience and replaced it with a craving for murder. Shiro’s look of resignation when he had emerged, Galran arm missing and knowing that that was his last day alive. How he had made eye contact with Keith before the fight had began and smiled with tears in his eyes. The horrible, swirling, sinking feeling in Keith’s gut, the despair that had cut him like a knife when the prisoner had torn his brother to pieces. The roar of the crowd, thirsty for drama, eager for the long-awaited new Champion.

How could he ever forget? His hands were now clenched so hard they were drawing blood — Galran blood he had inherited from his mother; dull, viscous, purple. Completely different from the bright red that had painted the floor that day or the day his father had died. He voice was barely a whisper, drowned out by the fire crawling through his throat and swirling behind his eyes. “It wasn’t even a fight, it was a public _execution_.”

—

Lance didn’t know what to say. Keith had seemed like he wasn’t telling him something but Lance had never expected it to be such a tragic backstory. He looked at the half-Galran standing in front of him, head bowed and trembling. With what? Rage? Despair? Lance had no idea which he would feel in that situation. “God, Keith,” he said, at a loss of what to say. “That’s… horrible.”

Keith wasn’t looking at him. When he spoke, his voice shook, though he was trying not to show it. “Yeah well, it happens.”

Lance’s mind was racing. He didn’t know what to do, but he had to do _something_. Maybe he could take his mind off it. “Hey, do you have a break now?” he asked.

At last, Keith looked at him. He cocked his head to the side, confused. “I guess? I may as well, considering I’ve been talking to you for almost a varga.”

“Well, my friend,” Lance tingled a bit with happiness to be able to use that term. It got a little lonely jumping from planet to planet with just his almost-sentient spaceship. “We are going to dance.”

“What’s that?” Keith asked, still confused.

Lance gasped melodramatically, “This is unacceptable! You will know how to dance by the end of this quintant.”

Before Keith could refuse, Lance grabbed him by the waist and twirled him around. And then by far the best thing of the day happened: Keith laughed, despite his indignant spluttering (which he would deny profusely of doing later on).

It was magical and the least alone Lance had felt in a while. For the next three vargas, Lance and his new friend twirled and spun together in a field of _aerflos._ Maybe that dance had brought good luck after all.

**Author's Note:**

> [hit me up on tumblr!](https://manijela.tumblr.com)


End file.
